(NYT46) UNDATED -- Feb. 21, 2008 -- MOON-COMPETITION -- A concept photograph of a legged moon rover from Team Italia. More than three decades after the last Apollo astronauts roamed the lunar surface, a disparate collection of universities, open-source engineers and quixotic aerospace startups are planning to launch their own robotic missions to the Earth's barren cousin. The return to the moon is part of the Google Lunar X Prize, a competition sponsored by the company with $30 million in prizes for the first two teams to land a robotic rover on the moon and send images and other data back home. (Team Italia via The New York Times)*EDITORIAL USE ONLY*
Ran on: 02-22-2008
A leggy moon rover is shown in concept photo from Team Italia, one idea for landing a moon robot to send back images, other data.
Ran on: 02-22-2008
A leggy moon rover is shown in concept photo from Team Italia, one idea for landing a moon robot to send back images, other data.

Now 10 teams of scientists and dreamers from around the world, including one that thanked Jesus Christ for inspiration, have joined a $30 million-plus race to the moon co-sponsored by Google.

Google said in September that it would pay $20 million to the first private team to land a robotic rover on the moon by the year 2014 and transmit data to Earth. It promised $5 million for second place and another $5 million in bonuses.

On Thursday, Space Florida - a public-private partnership that promotes the Sunshine State's aerospace industry - announced it would sweeten the pot by $2 million for any winning contestant that launches from its facilities.

The nonprofit XPrize Foundation, which will administer the contest, introduced the first contestant in December, a British-Canadian group called Odyssey Moon. A U.S. startup by the name of Astrobotic, led by Carnegie-Mellon robotics expert William "Red" Whittaker, also declared its intention to compete at that time.

Lending an international flavor to the race, Professor Alberto Rovetta of Politecnico di Milano in Italy, said his team's participation was intended to spur "the young heart of Italy" toward a greater interest in science and engineering.

"Science needs brains, but the heart is essential," he said.

Bogdan Sburlea, project manager for ARCA, the Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association, drew a laugh when he said the race was the best way to fire up young imaginations. Young people are interested in only two things, he said, "space exploration and finding out what happened to the dinosaurs. And that's it."

Santa Cruz software consultant Fred Bourgeois III represented the hacker-hippie element of the tech community with his Team FredNet. It will rely on the concept of "open source" engineering - that is, throwing ideas out to a community of interested participants who will be encouraged to trouble-shoot and improve designs offered by the core team.

"We intend to create a rover slightly larger than the typical cell phone," Bourgeois said, adding that the team hopes eventually to deploy a network of these mini-rovers on asteroids to gather signals from deep space.

Colorado engineer Richard Speck paused while talking about his Team Micro-Space to hold up a simple red cross and said, "I need to thank the Lord Jesus Christ for inspiration."

Brin said the idea for the competition grew out of conversations with Diamandis, a space entrepreneur and personal friend, and Elon Musk, another friend and former PayPal executive who started his own Southern California rocket firm, SpaceX.

"I said, 'What would it take to get a rover on the moon?' " Brin said.

When he learned the cost would range from tens of millions of dollars to about $100 million, Brin said, he realized it was an amount some companies might spend to make a movie or sponsor a racing yacht.

"I was shocked at how this incredible space for human discovery was left absent" from private sector support, Brin said, adding, "If we are going to sponsor things, it should be for new discovery and in ambitious and unexpected ways."

Behind the race is the belief that the moon is an "eighth continent" that will one day provide resources for human consumption. In fielding questions after the presentation, Diamandis likened the lunar orb to Alaska, whose purchase by the United States more than a century ago seemed a folly at the time. Now, it provides oil and other resources. In similar fashion, he said, one benefit of moon exploration might be the mining of silicon to create solar arrays that ultimately would beam power back to Earth.

Adil Jafry, an energy executive with Team Chandah, said in his case, the inspiration was simply that he believed a proverb he once heard: "Your children will go to the moon to have tea one day."

Diamandis said that more than 500 teams from 53 nations - including a group from Kazakhstan - so far have expressed interest in the race, but only the 10 announced teams have satisfied the XPrize Foundation that they have the right stuff to orchestrate a moon launch and exploration.

Rounding out the eight other contestants announced Thursday are:

-- Team Quantum 3, including former NASA Chief of Staff Courtney Stadd;

-- Team SCSG, led by retired satellite engineer Rosen, who developed the first geostationary satellite that made it possible to broadcast the 1964 Tokyo Olympics;